Walter Lord

Walter Lord (October 8, 1917 – May 19, 2002) was an American author, best known for his documentary-style non-fiction account A Night to Remember, about the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Lord was born in Baltimore, Maryland to John Walterhouse and Henrietta Hoffman. His father was a lawyer who died when Walter was just three years old. His grandfather, Richard Curzon Hoffman, was president of the Baltimore Steam Packet Company ("Old Bay Line") stea... more

Walter Lord (October 8, 1917 – May 19, 2002) was an American author, best known for his documentary-style non-fiction account A Night to Remember, about the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Lord was born in Baltimore, Maryland to John Walterhouse and Henrietta Hoffman. His father was a lawyer who died when Walter was just three years old. His grandfather, Richard Curzon Hoffman, was president of the Baltimore Steam Packet Company ("Old Bay Line") steamship firm in the 1890s. Following high school at Baltimore's Gilman School, he studied history at Princeton University, graduating in 1939. Lord then enrolled at Yale Law School, interrupting his studies to join the Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor. During World War II, he was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services as a code clerk in London in 1942. He was the agency's secretariat when the war ended in 1945. Afterwards, Lord returned to Yale where he earned a degree in law. While Lord wrote twelve bestselling books on such subjects... less